In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Regarding the salmon issue:
Judge Hogan, of the Federal District Court of Oregon, the judge who ruled against the government and for the resource users in the case that overturned the federal determination to list multiple salmon stocks as endangered, is a fairly right-wing conservative. This is not meant as a criticism or to say that he can't be impartial, but a look at his jurisprudence shows that he tends to allow his decisions to be influenced by his personal beliefs. Such influence is natural for all humans. We all like to think that our world view is the correct world view. In this case, the plaintiffs "shopped" for the right judge, the judge whose personal beliefs were most in line with their own. Possibly because of this political kinship, in Judge Hogan, they obtained a judge who would develop a novel legal concept: a species is not endangered if we can produce as many of the species as we want in concrete pools and dump them into the environment. Judge Hogan bought the argument that hatchery salmon are the same as wild salmon, notwithstanding the fact that most hatchery brood stocks were chosen for their size--to maximize catch weight--rather than their suitability for the particular stream in which they are released (natural salmon have many different attributes suited specifically to the stream in which they are reared that improve survivability such as size at the beginning of the ocean run, timing for the return to the brood stream, etc.). He bought the argument that hatchery operations are a sustainable practice and that hatcheries will always be operated. He bought the argument, against decades of ESA rulings, that a species that lacks quality habitat is not endangered if there continue to be significant numbers of the species--in his view then, habitat is irrelevant to species survival. No, in Judge Hogan's world, species survivability is tied *only* to the numbers of the animal in the world. So let's hear it for zoos.
The administration compounded the inanity of this decision by not appealing the case. Instead, the administration directed the National Marine Fisheries Service to throw out years of work that it spent in studying the salmon in the NW and the careful work that it performed in listing the salmon and start the rulemaking process all over again.
- B 1:04 PM - [PermaLink] -
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